125 Newbury in New York is set to present “Kiki Smith: The Moon Watches the Earth,” an exhibition of new and historical works by the American artist Kiki Smith. This presentation marks Smith’s first solo show in New York City in six years. Curated by Arne Glimcher in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition places works in dialogue across three-and-a-half decades of Smith’s practice. The collection of works centers on themes of transience and the fragility and joy of embodiment.
The exhibition will debut a series of new bronzes, drawings, and prints produced in recent years. Among these are new bird reliefs in bronze. In several of these works, Smith has eschewed her usual patinated surfaces, opting instead for raw, unfinished metal. This method allows all marks from the casting process to remain visible, likened to wounds. These new bronzes are exhibited in conversation with Wooden Moon (2022), a monumental ink-and-watercolor woodcut measuring 12 feet in width, and a new series of bird drawings on diaphanous silk tissue paper.
Juxtaposed with these new pieces are significant historical works from the late 1980s and early 1990s. A central component is a large-scale, site-responsive installation that has not been exhibited in the U.S. for over 30 years. This installation, made during the AIDS crisis, consists of papier-mâché figures suspended from the gallery’s ceiling. Large monochromatic panels of painted red paper transform the room’s tonality, contrasting with the “pallid figures whose shell-like forms appear like bodily envelopes hanging in space”. The work is noted to reference St. Thomas Aquinas’s notion of the separation of matter and form. It is presented alongside other earlier works in paper and bronze, including the sculpture Untitled (Meat Arm) (1992).
The exhibition also features several works in various print media. Printmaking is described as central to Smith’s practice. The technical processes of printing and casting are noted to echo one another as methods of transfer. In her cast works, Smith begins by drawing, incising graphic markers into a clay surface. She then covers the entire clay surface with wax, creating a cast of the drawing. Since the 1980s, Smith has drawn inspiration from folklore, mythology, history, and the natural world. Drawing has long remained at the heart of her practice, even amid wide-ranging experimentation with materials.
Kiki Smith (American, b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany) is recognized for her multidisciplinary practice exploring embodiment and the natural world. Her work addresses mortality, regeneration, gender, and the interconnection of spirituality and nature. Smith has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including over twenty-five museum shows, and her work has been featured at five Venice Biennales. She has also completed several permanent installations, including the Rose Window at the Museum at Eldridge Street (2010), five mosaics for the Grand Central Madison terminal (2022), and the Chapel of Mary’s Mantle in Freising, Germany (2023).
Smith has been represented by Pace Gallery since 1994. The exhibition celebrates the nearly four-decade friendship between the artist and Arne Glimcher. Glimcher, the Founder and Chairman of Pace Gallery, helms 125 Newbury, a project space he founded in 2022. Operating under the auspices of Pace, the space is guided by Glimcher’s six decades of exhibition-making and presents shows that often highlight a specific aspect or focused period of an artist’s practice.
“Kiki Smith: The Moon Watches the Earth” will be on view from November 7, 2025, to January 10, 2026, at 125 Newbury, located at 395 Broadway in New York.
